Excellency Limits, all balanced?

Cryoseraph

Cryoseraph

Junior Member
So I'm having trouble with this limiter on Sidereals after examining them, though other excellencies seem off balanced as well.


The basic excellency limiter is the Solar one: Attribute + Ability. Somewhere between 2 and 10 dice worth of bonuses in a normal game (Mortal life of Essence 5 maximum). In the top tiers, it raises up to 20 dice at Essence 10. Abyssals and Infernals use the same cap.


Dragon-Bloods have the next best one: Ability + Specialty. This is between 1 and 8 dice in a normal game, with a true maximum of about 10 to 13 (If a DB ever reached Essence 10).


Next are the Lunars and Alchemicals: Attribute. Between 1 and 5-8 in normal games (8 is for maxed out Lunar warforms and charm expansions), and at most 10/13 (Lunar) at Essence 10. There is one more expansion to Lunars, the Relentless Lunar Fury charm, and their social and mental equivalents. This increases the cap to Attribute + Essence temporarily, jumping the cap between 1-5 dice normally, and +10 dice at Essence 10.


Finally, last on the list are the Sidereals. Their dice cap limitation is Essence. Just Essence. So, between 1-5 in a normal game, and 10 maximum. However, they have a big conditional added to it, which is that they can add any amount of dice to cancel out any penalties they're dealing with. That's a very odd conditional, but Solars have many charms to ignore internal or external penalties, so it isn't unheard of.


So, my basic question is, does this stuff seem balanced out to match their power levels? Solars and solar knock-offs all match as most powerful, but are the Lunar/Sidereal caps as fair to their power level as the Dragon-Blooded ones are to Terrestrials? Should an Essence 2 DB be able to add 8 dice to his roll when the Essence 2 Sidereal only gets 2 dice of his own? Something just seems out of balance on this . . .
 
The sidereal's do get the shaft in dice adding game, which is why the reroll is their cheap excellency as it will often be more useful, and kinda fits with the sidereal theme more. Also most sidereal's serious about combat go martial arts, and the dice adder from their hero form is a great scene long one. I'm sure with tweaking the sidereals could come up with a better excellency, but the maidens don't let them so they're stuck with what spirits use for dice adding (teaches them to allow god to make their charm trees)
 
Don't forget about the Fateful (Ability) Excellencies Charm which allows a Sidereal to lower the target number for the dice roll (usually 7) by 1 per each mote spent, but cannot be reduced below 4. Then there is the secondary portion of it that allows them to spend enough motes to reduce it to 3 and 1wp to turn the whole dice pool into automatic auspicious successes.
 
Good point, Ghoti. So, the theme that I can extrapolate from the Sidereal Excellencies is that they can always pull off some success instead of screwing up (cheaper 3rd excellency), even perfectly succeed any mortal task (all successes through Fateful Excellency), but are never really meant to break the barriers of such limits (low 1st & 2nd excellency die adders). Would that be a fair judgement? And more importantly, does that much the Sidereal style of play?


On another note, do Lunars do well with just Attribute as a dice cap? Is an average 4 or so die bonus more fair when only spread out between 9 stats instead of 25 stats?
 
Cryoseraph said:
Good point, Ghoti. So, the theme that I can extrapolate from the Sidereal Excellencies is that they can always pull off some success instead of screwing up (cheaper 3rd excellency), even perfectly succeed any mortal task (all successes through Fateful Excellency), but are never really meant to break the barriers of such limits (low 1st & 2nd excellency die adders). Would that be a fair judgement? And more importantly, does that much the Sidereal style of play?
On another note, do Lunars do well with just Attribute as a dice cap? Is an average 4 or so die bonus more fair when only spread out between 9 stats instead of 25 stats?
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Well best way is comparing how many dice you would be rolling in best and worst cases with other exalted and I don't just mean how much bonus you get but how many dice you actually roll.


For example; A dragon-blood max roll is 13 unboosted dice(5attribute+5abilty+3specialty) without any other bonus or penalty and a total max of 21 dices (+8 max bonus from excellency) with excellency. For lunars in warform max roll is 16 (8 attribute+ 5 ability+ 3 specailty) and with excellency its total max is 24 (even a solar only gets 23). It may not look like a big difference but lunars can boost their damage or their soak with excellency and they can use dexterity excellency on both attack roll and on defense to increase DV without need of a combo (ok dragon-blooded don't need a combo either but to boost dodge DV and attack roll at the same time they still need two excellency). Lasty you answered it yourself 9 is almost 1/3rd (2,78 to be precise) of 25.
 
Greenstalker said:
Well best way is comparing how many dice you would be rolling in best and worst cases with other exalted and I don't just mean how much bonus you get but how many dice you actually roll.
For example; A dragon-blood max roll is 13 unboosted dice(5attribute+5abilty+3specialty) without any other bonus or penalty and a total max of 21 dices (+8 max bonus from excellency) with excellency. For lunars in warform max roll is 16 (8 attribute+ 5 ability+ 3 specialty) and with excellency its total max is 24 (even a solar only gets 23). It may not look like a big difference but lunars can boost their damage or their soak with excellency and they can use dexterity excellency on both attack roll and on defense to increase DV without need of a combo (ok dragon-blooded don't need a combo either but to boost dodge DV and attack roll at the same time they still need two excellency). Lastly you answered it yourself 9 is almost 1/3rd (2,78 to be precise) of 25.
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Just to make sure people know though, An Attribute of 8 only really applies to lunars after the following conditions: You are in Deadly Beastman Transformation, and you have Devastating Ogre Enhancement (Net bonus of +2 to Physical Attributes), and you have the First Age charm to increase your Attribute cap by 1. Those final two charms require Essence 5, so this only rarely for Lunars and only for physical stats. Non-physical is only +6 at best, and at Essence 4 or lower, the caps are +6 physical, +5 non-physical.


So, in short, it takes 3 additional charms to reach that mighty 8 dice. On every one of those you lack, you come up fairly short. The 'Relentless' Charms do give another option, but only for a short time as well. NO one else goes through hoops for such a bonus to excellencies.
 
While I do agree Lunars do seem a bit weaker where Excellencies are concerned due to the limitation being based solely on their attributes, there are ways to bring your Strength and Stamina above the 6 limit while in Deadly Beastman Trasnformation without the use of Charms. Taking the Large Size mutation will bump Strength and Stamina by an additional 1, which brings them up to 7 if they are maxed. Also, while it may be a cheap trick for bigger numbers, you could also take the Large Size mutation in your base form as well, putting you at 8/6/8 in DBT. Unless we want to say that the mutations from your normal form don't carry into your Beastman form, then we're only talking about 7/6/7 before any Charms are applied.


That said, I find that the two Lunars we have in our game tend to be more interested in Shapeshifting Knacks than Charms. Not to mention that most of the players (myself included) rarely use Excellencies to begin with (it might just be that we are new to the system).
 
Lunar excellencies are actually pretty rubbish in general.. thing is, for dragon blooded and solars, getting a highish excellency isn't that hard, as abilities are cheap(er), you get lots of points in them at chargen, lots of favoured, and while DB's fall behind a bit on some of those compared to solars, specialities beef them up quite easily and cheaply, given they also boost the flat use by 1 as well.. no reason not to get them in you areas of expertise.


Lunars only get even vaguely comparable if they game the system.. and you need to powergame -hard- to even try to keep up with solars. The real issue isn't the fact that they're not balanced in their areas of expertise.. it's in their areas of -non- expertise.


Take a look at how many attributes you get, and you'll almost regularly end up with several low ones. This messes you up in -so- many ways..


Take a full moon, phys specialised.. and then they have to pick whether they want to be able to talk to people at all, or be intelligent and quick witted. Let's say they've gone with the talking. You now have 4 points to spend in Mental.. because of the way lunar excellencies work, if you want to be vaguely good at anything, you're going to need to put either 3 or 4 of those points into one attribute.. the rest are just dumpstats. Let's say you've gone with wits, as you're favouring combat builds, fair enough.


You've now got either 1 or 2 in perception, depending on whether you want to be blind, or dumb. Due to other annoyances like having to spend bonus points on ess, willpower, attributes or virtues (which frankly, are the things you need to give you a boost at chargen with lunars), you likely have little or no abilities beyond 3.. so your general pool for say, awareness.. is going to be a 4 or a 5. To which, if you even bother to get an excellency, you can add a grand total of 1 or 2 too.


... woo.. 5 or 7 pool.. go me. Is it even worth buying said excellency?.. for -12- xp? Probly not


That's the main difference I find, lunars, despite being the so called generalists, are anything but I find.. to keep competetive you need to boost your attributes high, and you can't tend to focus on them all, so you end up specialising and some inevitably end up a bit lame, and attributes -all- tend to get used, is the thing, compared to abilities where you just flat out won't use some if you don't do that kinda thing.


Solars on the other hand with their 10 favoured abilities, and even DBs, can pretty much cherry pick what they want to be good at and not overly worry about about other things. They'll be good at those picks, and can pretty easily double (or nearly for DBs) their pools in those, and even in abilities they don't massively focus in but want to be semi good at, they could pop a 2 or 3 in it.. combined with common attributes that's easily going to reach a pool of 10.


So yeah, I find the low end to be the biggest difference, doubling a pool is pretty powerful at all levels.. adding 1 or 2.. less so.


That's before you even get into the whole, infinite mastery differences.. cause that'll just blow lunar excellencies away (though to be fair, they blow all other excellencies away too really)
 
Very good points on trying to build a Full-Moon who is good at everything. They do end up with a very short end of the stick when trying to build the ultimate warrior.


However, when thinking of a character who is a good generalist, I find that the Changing Moons and No Moons work better. I actaully helped the two players who are Lunars build their characters. We were able to create a good Changing Moon (Wits as the fourth Favored), who can also be useful in combat (don't forget Speed and Extra Action Charms also fall under Wits), but is more than worth her salt outside of combat. However, the No Moon is the better of the two because we dumped most of the freebies into Attributes to round out the character. While she has a low Manipulation (which isn't necessarily a bad thing), she is good in a fight (thanks to Martial Arts) and has a few Sorcery spells too. The way she gets around lacking most Social based Abilites is using Lessons in the Blood, which lets her gain access to the abilities of another creature for a whole scene. But then, we've gone off on a tangent.


Sorry.
 
So, now that Sidereals and Lunars have both been examined a bit, here's a thought I've been grappling with. Solar types should be more powerful, and Terrestrials maybe get good Excellencies because that's all they get (putting that off for just a moment so as to reach the current thought), but Lunars and Sidereals should really be about equal in power level, as they are both the 'mid'-celestials, as most game power level measurements take them. Do their excellencies even try to balance against each other for comparably equal power? Or are they so apples vs. oranges that they aren't even related fruits anymore, and the apple is really a rutabega or a cat? They just seem so hard to compare.


I'm beginning to wonder if the differentiation of these excellencies are based so much more on release order (1st and 2nd editions) vs. accurate balance. The further out the exalted splat was, the wackier the excellencies, until they hit the Abyssals/Infernals, and naturally reined it back in with the Solar cap. Hell, I think the biggest reason for Alchemicals getting classified into Celestial level might have been Attribute based powers looking too strong for Terrestrial levels. (That kettle of fish has its own argument, don't mean to bring it up for discussion here, its there if you want in on that: http://www.patternspider.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=7707)

wordman said:
If you are thinking of tinkering with excellencies, you might want to read an analysis I did a couple years ago about a variant "roll and keep" system for Exalted. Even if you don't care about the roll and keep part, the trends in the graphs might be useful for whatever you are doing.
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The graph trends are intriguing, though its kind of tough picking out the regular canon rolls to see how the previous power sets respond vs. the roll & keep. Did you have any models for the previous rolling styles of the regular system that we could peek at?


The biggest thing I pulled from that set of stats is the skewed abilities of Sidereals. I think one issue I have with the 'Fateful Excellency' of Sidereals explains it well enough. Their big unique power is the ability to get all successes on their die pool. This does not allow them to gain any '10s count for 2 successes' in a roll, and so actually caps them in a way the regular dice adders don't. The only way to increase the base pool from this point to create a combo involving other excellencies, quite expensive as this 'all success' version already cost 4m+1wp. Heck, even a regular roll of their die pool can get higher than their fateful excellency can give at max, so I'd rather make the target number at only 4 instead of auto-successes so I could still get 10's to count.
 
Well, when considering overall power, I feel that the Lunars and the Sidereals power level can’t just be judged from the Excellencies. Where their power lies is in what else they can do. There are so many examples to chose from, but to avoid another tangent I will limit myself to 3 for each.


Lunars have the obvious shapeshifting benefits (including DBT) that let them become something more than they are. They also have shaping abilities to let them be able to reshape parts of the world around them to suit their needs (punch through a brick wall with little effort, reshape the bars on the cell to escape). Beyond this, they have the access to healing Charms that are Reflexive and can be used in combat.


Sidereals have Destinies which can grants them bonuses, add penalties for their enemies, and let them take on other “formsâ€. These count as two different powers because Ascending and Descending Destinies are different from Resplendent Destinies. As the third, they have some very odd Charms that are extremely useful. Heart Brightening Presentation Style lets them use any Excellencies for Socialize, Performance, Presence or Bureaucracy for any roll on any of those four abilities. Soft Presence Practice mutes their Anima Flare by 1/2 (good for using Charms while wearing a Resplendent Destiny). Most of their Archery Charms are crazy good too. Then there is what I think is the best Excellency in the entire game the Fateful (Ability) Excellencies sure it might not be prefect and you could get more successes from a really good roll. However, when you need to appear to be mortal, I say build yourself a combo of Soft Presence Practice , Fateful Bureaucracy Excellency, and First Bureaucracy Excellency for 7 XP and use it. Then take your Essence 3, maxed Manipulation, maxed Bureaucracy, and a specialization for Fast Talk of 3, use the 9m+1wp to get your 16 successes and keep your anima flare subdued to get that fancy powersuit (or whatever you have your eye on) for next to nothing. And this is even without having an Ascending Destiny that could lower the Target Number by 1 before you even use the Fateful Excellecy and add an automatic success (maing the expendature 8m+1wp for 17 successes). The best part is, you can do this at character creation without much effort for any ability (minus the Specilization, cutting the successes back to 13/14).
 
Yes, but pretty much all the various mutations, shape shifting benefits, and shapey type charms.. those only tend to help physical stuff.


There's some awareness and perception boosters, but as there's been many discussions all about the place, there's a large lack of decent things lunars can do with them outside of that area


None of these things help you get better at talking to people, and most of the charms require you to beat MDV, which can be hard enough as it stands frankly.. couple it with low end excellencies and it can get worse when you want to be good at social.. hence the pretty kitty build to try and keep on top.


And that in of itself is one of the biggest examples I can give.. to beat a decent MDV, a solar would just use their bog standard excellency. A lunar socialite will need at least 2 (cha/manip and appearance), which then probably needs a combo, unless you buy -another- excellency for the essence flo.ohhohoh wait, no, lunars can't have that.. cause being able to use their low output excellencies in adaptable combinations would be.. overpowered or something? Not that having to buy a third excellency would exactly make the situation better, but still, that's a massive difference, solar needs 1 8xp excellency to hit a high MDV, lunar needs 2 10xp excellencies and at min a 2xp combo to hit that same high MDV with regularity


You could use the .. charm who's name I've forgotten.. the silver spirit or expression or something like that, that lets you add ess to your excellency caps.. but guess what that does.. it forces you to over specialise and outright focus on something to an obsessive level.. .. it leads me to believe that deep down, lunars are actually the -worst- exalts at generalisation, and actually entirely non adaptable, outside of their one true focus, survival. Still a large hold back from 1st ed maybe.


They need to specialise a -lot- to stay competetive.
 
So, now for the reason this fun thread is in the House Rules sub-forum: How to fix the Sidereal and Lunar Excellencies? I think the power of the three Lunar Charms for increasing their caps to add Essence are a good sign. While they do have to be focused on the task at hand, once they are done the investment is over, and they can use it again on some completely different task. I think Sidereals should have a similar set of charms that either add Ability or College scores to the Sidereal dice cap. Or perhaps this is a latent power to be had in Resplendent Destinies, a basic reason to have some of them carried or in use even when there is no other known reason for them to be carried.
 
A few questions. Are you aware of the Lunar Charms that allow you to add Essence to the die cap for a specific group of Excellencies for a scene? There's one for all three categories of Physical, Social and Mental, namely Relentless Lunar Fury, Irresistible Silver Spirit and Inevitable Genius Insight.


Further, Sidereals have access to their 2nd Excellency, which is capped at Essence, not Half Essence. This brings them to par with Solar Excellencies over the long hall, and in fact superior to such in the high essence range. A high essence Solar has access to Attribute+ Ability/2 for 2nd Excellency. A high essence Sidereal has access to Essence, not divided. Since the Attributes and Ability scores normally cap at Essence, this results in the same thing, save that the Sidereal doesn't actually need to have those stats to get to the same cap. They'll still WANT those levels of Attribute and Ability in their important Abilities, but they can get the same level of auto-success as a master in abilities they barely know. That...is quite powerful indeed.
 
A few questions. Are you aware of the Lunar Charms that allow you to add Essence to the die cap for a specific group of Excellencies for a scene? There's one for all three categories of Physical, Social and Mental, namely Relentless Lunar Fury, Irresistible Silver Spirit and Inevitable Genius Insight.
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I did know of these three charms, though I had not named them all. The best I'd done in this thread was refer to them as the 'Relentless charms', in honor of its most popular physical choice of the three. They are included in the calculations of the maximum dice cap amounts of Lunars in the original post.

Further, Sidereals have access to their 2nd Excellency, which is capped at Essence, not Half Essence.
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This I didn't realize at all, and I had to go back and read the bit in the Sidereals book again just to check, and I agree the way it is written, I would say they get successes equal to Essence. It could be argued against for the lack of more specific reference, and probably deserves a quick errata or FAQ to be sure of which it should be. Not that I'm starting that argument here, just that I could see it go either way for people who like to argue. If this is true, it is a huge jump for Sidereals, and sounds like it fits the Sidereal style of 'assured success' over 'more chances of success' very well.

Since the Attributes and Ability scores normally cap at Essence, this results in the same thing, save that the Sidereal doesn't actually need to have those stats to get to the same cap. They'll still WANT those levels of Attribute and Ability in their important Abilities, but they can get the same level of auto-success as a master in abilities they barely know. That...is quite powerful indeed.
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While all this holds true once everyone hits Essence 5; before Essence 5, say at a beginning PC level of Essence 2 or 3, the Sidereals feel that lack, and Solars can hit 5's in their Attributes and Abilities really quickly, Abilities especially, compared to the speed of Essence. And Sidereals have it even more expensive for Essence purchase than the Solars do, so that also holds them back a bit. The skill to get some bonuses to what you are bad at however is nice, but then you'd be spending XP on charms to improve an ability you are bad at instead of alternatively buying up the ability, or buying charms for what you are good at. And that seems like a tough choice to make.


It all seems too counter-intuitive to me, and that's why I'm wondering if there is a way to change the Excellencies to fix these issues. Maybe build-up charms to the Lunar 'Essence dice cap expansion' charms to make them more permanent? Maybe similar expansion charms for the Sidereals to let them have access to Essence + Ability or College for a period of time? Would these help or hinder the balancing process?
 
Cryoseraph said:
While all this holds true once everyone hits Essence 5; before Essence 5, say at a beginning PC level of Essence 2 or 3, the Sidereals feel that lack, and Solars can hit 5's in their Attributes and Abilities really quickly, Abilities especially, compared to the speed of Essence. And Sidereals have it even more expensive for Essence purchase than the Solars do, so that also holds them back a bit. The skill to get some bonuses to what you are bad at however is nice, but then you'd be spending XP on charms to improve an ability you are bad at instead of alternatively buying up the ability, or buying charms for what you are good at. And that seems like a tough choice to make.
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Its just my opinion but I think you shouldn't compare anything to solars. Lets face facts white wolf always focus on fluff more than mechanics (atleast it was that way tii nWoD I can't compare nWoD since I don't own or see any book yet) Fluff says solars are 'best at everything by huge margin' no argument in here seriously given examples includes Herackles, Paul Bunyan and such (unless you are using 'rule 0' but than it enters the universe of 'house rules' so its not the point.)


You need to compare sidereals with lunars since those two are only celestial exalts (abyssals and GSP are solar-brokens after all) other than solars. Dragon-bloodeds created as foot-soldiers they having better excelencies for more success on combat makes sense. For social combat it would be bad if primordials could turn bulk of armies towards gods and celestial exalts so they having better excelency on that end also no biggie for any other ability if a solar is designer than DB's can be think of working force (or tools) of him in craft or medicine or anyother ability.


Also again by fluff exalts had enough time to perfect themselves. Dragon-blooded did nothing but reproduce for over centuries so I think most of exaltations are created by thinking end result not begining so if you are going to compare them (fluff-wise) you need to do at their top-notch condition not starting condition. They are also created in purpose to have a role after primordials are defeated. Solars will be rulers, sidereals will be advisors by using loom of fate, ragon-bloodeds will beworking force and lunars will keep solars busy with anything they can do so solars won't get bored and usurp yu-shan and game of divinity from gods (ok last one is my personal view but imagine what would Desus do if Lilith was not there to keep him occupied.)
 
To be fair, I've done my best not to make direct comparisons of power between the Solar types and others, but my last post was in response to specific comparisons made by another poster. I am personally okay when Sidereals get outshined by the Solars. My problem is their ability to shine equally with Lunars and superior to Dragon-Blooded. Dragon-Blooded can reach their dice-cap maximum with little to no effort, and I'd say easier than Solars. Do their dice-caps suffer at over-mortal levels (Essence 6+)? You betchya, and they should. My problem is a starting DB could probably take out a starting Sidereal via a fully-buffed attack flurry, while the Siddie has little ability to make such a blow on a DB.


Which then leads into the second category of fluff vs. mechanics. Always a dangerous subject for White-Wolf games of course, but the Exalted line has had numerous erratas and fixes to balance out such things over time. Such errata eventually leads to new editions (Old World 1st, to 2nd to revised to New World; Exalted 1st to Power Combat to 2nd to current errata heavy version for full balance), with little fluff changed each time except as to explain the change in a mechanic.


The fluff has declared that the general Celestial level Exalts should be about equal in strength, except for their areas of expertise. But Sidereals are so specialized and Lunars made to be so flexible, the ability to compare breaks down. By comparison, a DB is pretty easy to use, and their specialties of elemental powers and cooperative powers in groups give them the power to challenge bigger foes. And the Excellencies they have, even with their lower essence pools, put everyone but Solar-types to shame, in my opinion.


So the real question is: How do we fix it? What do we do to Lunar and Sidereal Excellencies to make them worthwhile options? I've made some suggestions in previous posts, but are they enough, or too much?
 
Cryoseraph said:
So the real question is: How to we fix it? What do we do to Lunar and Sidereal Excellencies to make them worthwhile options? I've made some suggestions in previous posts, but are they enough, or too much?
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I don't think they need any changes on excelencies other than maybe less dependant charm tree on them but since this is in the house rules sections lets see;


Adding new charms (or maybe even knacks) to increase cap may work for lunars since there is already similiar charms. Alternatively you can make certain changes onexisting relentless charms to make them give more permenant dice cap increase. For sidereals however I don't think it will work as intended since they are not simply categorised and unlike lunars 9 attribute excelencies there is 25 ability excelencies. Best solution I can give for sidereals is making cap essence+(some combination of virtues and/or willpower) maybe avarage of virtues it won't go against play style of sidereals too much either.
 
Sidereals are are an issue close to my heart, so I feel the need to chip in.

Cryoseraph said:
So the real question is: How do we fix it? What do we do to Lunar and Sidereal Excellencies to make them worthwhile options? I've made some suggestions in previous posts, but are they enough, or too much?
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I'm not sure they need fixing. Lunar excellencies have lower caps, but have vastly wider applicability; I think that's working as intended. If they need to go all out, they have Relentless Lunar Fury etc to pick up the slack. Do you think that isn't enough? I don't have much personal experience with Lunars, so I can't offer much more than that.


As for Sidereals...their excellencies are a bit weird, but not deficient, I think. I'm playing a Sidereal in a long running campaign, mostly in the essence 3-4 range. The second excellency is almost as good as the solar one at this level, and doesn't require you to buy up abilities/attributes to get the most out of it. That is, it works well when your dice pool isn't high. Conversely, if your dice pool is high, break out the fateful excellency, and buy your target number down to 4 for a mere 3 motes. Unlike other excellencies, it gets more powerful with dice pool modifiers such as accuracy and specialties, and stacks with non-excellency dice adders such are certain martial arts forms.


In general, I think, Sidereals have a number of tricks they can use to get more out of their excellencies. Heart Brightening Presentation Style was mentioned earlier in the thread, and I'll point out it benefits greatly from the addition of a Fateful excellency and Propitious Alignment. The floating specialties from Methodology of Secrets is a great trick for boosting your dice pools if you have preparation time, and boosts the fateful excellency. Long term projects (like crafting) can be boosted by ascending destinies, too.


That said, the Sidereal excellencies are a bit weird. In particuarly the way that the first is half as good as the second. I'm still not sure why.


As for fixing them...I was working on a Sidereal revision, before I heard about the impending errata. So now that project's on hold. However, in that revision I reduced the colleges to the five houses (I think this is a good idea generally), and linked all charms to the constellations, rather than abilities, the assertion being that Sidereal essence aligns itself with fate, in the same way that Solar essence is aligned with skill, and Lunar essence is aligned with talent. First (Constellation) Excellency, then, could boost any roll that resonated with the nature of the constellation. The related ability always qualified, as did any action with matched enough of the qualities listed in the constellation's description. This would work in a way similar to the Yozi excellencies, but more restricted...I hadn't worked out the balance of that exactly, but I think the idea is sound.


So the Excellencies were more broadly applicable. However, the first excellency capped at (Essence+penalties) dice, and the second could convert up to (Essence+penalties) dice into successes. In this revision, I'd included the concept of 'acting under the auspices' of a constellation, which essentially meant behaving in a way that would qualify you for a resplendent destiny under that constellation. When the character is acting under the auspices of a constellation, they excellency caps become (Essence x 2) or the normal one, whichever is higher. Or maybe that'd be better as (Essence+College). Anyway, the point is it rewarded preparation, which is something I was trying to stress in the charmset.


Phew. Long post.
 
For Lunars it's easy enough to have a form knack similar to Deadly Beast Man for the other attribute categories. For social you could call it 'royal plumage' or 'nekomimi mode' or something. For mental you could have 'natural brilliance' or some other pomposity. Then define or modify some charms as having the social or mental gift tag, and maybe make up some new mutations like pheromones, or third cerebral lobe. They could be a modification to DBM form like Ogre Enhancement so there wouldn't be the complication of multiple new true forms, but using full social would be tricky with anyone who wasn't into furries. In a game, I would say make the players create these as custom knacks.


For Sidereals I like Revoke's concept of using the constellation connection, but I would make the character schmooze with the gods of the relevant constellation to get non charm bonus dice. It still wouldn't affect excellencies and would take much prep time, or allies background, but it would earn xp rather than costing it.


This all assumes of coarse that what you want to is raise the dice caps.
 
I'm not gonna offer any insights on the Lunar or Sidereal ones, but for all intents and purposes Alchemicals are meant to be counted among the Celestial Exalted, but are the 'lowest end' of Celestial.


However, they have the use of the 4th Augmentation, which they can take up to essence/2 times rounded up that actually ups their stats. By Essence 5 an Alchemical can have 8 in an ability, for the sake of /everything/. This means they /are/ equal to Lunars in that while it takes more charms, they can get their Excellencies up to 8 by Essence 5 in /any/ category, not just Physical ones.


It gets even sillier since Alchemicals can pick and choose mutations to 'install' allowing them to take Large or Giant and have 9 or 10 in strength/stamina for augmentation's sake.


Alchemicals are weaker since it takes three charms to get to that, but as far as it is worded the ones past the first in each abiltiy do not take up motes /or/ charm slots, so all it takes is enough XP. This is especially useful in games that your Storyteller holds you to the 'must be a hundred years old to pass 5 essence' rule, since you can slowly bulk up your Alchemical to the point where by the time the 100 year thing passes he has 8 in /all/ attributes, and then can get 9 in all of them once he hits 100 years and can train his stats again.


So, are /they/ balanced towards the 'higher' powerlevel Celestials?
 
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